Mary Kaye Falcony

On June 29, Mary Kaye Falcony began working for the Diocese of Evansville as the Assistant Director of Catechesis, and she is excited to begin serving the Church in this new way.

As a high school student in Youngstown, Ohio, Falcony was eager to begin a career in advertising.  However, her plan changed when a sister at her school asked for help creating a catechetical program for special-needs children in the parish.

Falcony said yes to this offer and discovered that working with young people utilized her talents. “There have always been people who were able to recognize in me things that I couldn’t see in myself,” Falcony said of the sister who asked for her help.

As a result of this project, Falcony began a life of serving Christ through education.

Falcony graduated from Youngstown State University with undergraduate degrees in elementary education and special education.  From there, she obtained a master’s certificate in pastoral administration from Loyola University in New Orleans, La.  Falcony also received a master’s degree in religious education from Felician College.

Falcony says that since that first time working with children at 19, she has always been involved in Church ministry, from youth ministry to adult faith formation to teaching in a Catholic school.

When she and her family moved to Evansville for her husband’s job 25 years ago, Falcony began working as the director of religious education at Holy Rosary Parish.  For the past 14 years, she has taught theology at Reitz Memorial High School. She was also chair of the theology department there. 

This new career move, she said, is not the result of her looking for “more” from her job.  “Whenever I’ve made a change in direction, it’s not something I’ve sought out for myself,” she noted.  “I loved teaching high school. I love their energy and enthusiasm. But sometimes you just need a change, something that gives you a creative edge and new energy.”

She heard about the position by chance, and she felt compelled to look into the opportunity.  “It just happened in conversation one day.  Someone said this position was available, and it sounded like something I could really get excited about,” she said.

Most importantly, she decided to make this move because she felt God calling her to something new. “I believe that anything that happens like this is prompted by the Holy Spirit,” she said. 

Falcony is excited about the opportunities that her new position affords.  “This really causes me to be a visionary for the future, to envision what could be,” she said.

As she reflects on her teaching career, Falcony understands that students today have different needs and ways of learning than did those she taught years ago.  She hopes to bring this understanding into her work for the diocese.  As she put it, “The Church is dynamic, it’s not static, and we have to be able to look at it with new eyes.”

Along with serving the Church in her career, Falcony finds God in serving the poor.  As a teacher at Memorial, she worked with students to revamp the current service-hour program. 

The revitalized program revolves around the corporal works of mercy.  Rather than simply completing any service activity and filling out a confirmation slip, students must be educated about the organization they serve, and they must reflect on which corporal work(s) of mercy they practice. 

Falcony believes that reflecting on service helps connect our acts to the ministry of Christ – something she hopes to achieve within and outside of her career. “If you truly have Christ in your life, you can’t keep it to yourself,” she said. 

Above all, she hopes that her life and work spread the joy of Christ. “If we can exude that joy, they’ll want what we have.”